Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Monday August 04, 2008 @02:12PM
from the all-things-in-perspective dept.

In response to a fair amount of angry outcry at the new look and feel for Diablo III, designer Jay Wilson has critiqued some fan-altered screenshots and defended the new style. "The key thing to remember here is that this has been Photoshopped. This isn't created by the engine. Though it looks really cool, it's almost impossible to do in a 3D engine because you can't have lighting that smart and run on systems that are reasonable. If we could do that, we probably would in a few of the dungeons."

Doom 3 is perfect if you played in a completly dark room where your eyes can adjust. In that kind of environment "different shades of black" actually works. Playing it in a light room however is painful unless you turn up gamma, which you can't do in the basic settings, instead requiring you to use the console. And if you do turn up gamma the visual quality of course goes down.

This is the problem when doing any visually dark game. You have to consider how the game plays in a not so dark room.

Doom 3 is perfect if you played in a completly dark room where your eyes can adjust

And presumably if you have a CRT screen. Increasingly people these days have LCD screens, which can't do black at all. Playing in a dark room with an LCD -- even a good gaming LCD -- means having an immersion-wrecking glowing rectangle hovering in the air in front of you. It just doesn't work.

Kudos to Blizzard for actually trying to design a game that will look good on real people's PCs, instead of pandering to the crazy obsessions of a tiny minority.

It's been around a lot longer than Doom 3. I remember playing Marathon back when the only other FPS people played was Doom (1).

The first level it was creepy, after that it felt like the level designers just didn't realize that not all of us knew the level inside and out. "Okay, now even though I can't see it, there's a hunter in a nook halfway up that wall who is going to destroy me unless I launch rockets in that general direction."

Fortunately, bungie included tools that allowed you to play with the phys

If the proposed shots were to be included instead of the existing shots, my screen would still look more like the existing shots because I'd have to crank up the gamma. One of the first things I do in a game is adjust the gamma so that I can see everything. I never played Doom III (more into RPG than FPS), but I would have hated that game because you can't see (I've played I and II). In an RPG, darkness and fog of war and what not are much less important to the game since they are about the story and pla

To me, darkness and the "fog of war" effect point to laziness more than anything else. Sure, it's probably supposed to produce "atmosphere", but to me it just looks like they were too lazy to draw out the entire scene in detail. I enjoy FPS games, but the really dark areas drive me crazy. I want to see an immersive detailed world, not something I have to get right up next to and point a flashlight at before I can see how detailed it is.

To me, darkness and the "fog of war" effect point to laziness more than anything else. Sure, it's probably supposed to produce "atmosphere", but to me it just looks like they were too lazy to draw out the entire scene in detail.

I have to disagree. In AvP2 [wikipedia.org], when I was playing as a marine in the single-player mode, and there was a xenomorph somewhere out there in dimly red-lit building, the effect was incredibly spooky. In that particular game, the dim red lighting really made the mood.

I don't think you mean "fog of war." That is a term from real time and turn based strategy games that relates to what area of the map you have explored. I think you are talking about the clipping plane.

Shame I spent my mod points, or I'd give you a +1 insightful there.
I'll just have to say 'I agree'.
At least some games give you a nice gamma setting, but even in those cases, it tends to wash things out.

It seems these shots are more knee-jerk reaction from die-hard Diablo II fans than anything else. In each shot they've basically done whatever is necessary to make it look like "Diablo II+". I agree with the designers -- they *could* make it look like that, but they choose not to.

I think the biggest thing to remember is Diablo II was 2-D, and Diablo III is 3-D. You're never going to have 1:1 art translation like that.

I don't know why you got modded flamebait, but I agree. The altered version just looks like a Photoshop sharpness filter overly applied, and color adjusted to make everything darker (but in a way that will make everything far too dark on CRTs).

I haven't really RTFA'd, just looked at the pictures. I'm a bit torn on this story because I don't even think this designer needs to answer to people putting up screenshots that are entitled "wow gayness" when compared to their preferred screenshots. But as to whether or not he felt they had a valid point or he Blizzard just really cares for their fans, I cannot say.

While the lighting in a few of these looks like definitely done by hand, the only other major difference I see is color and tint. In example #1 the lighting is much better in the fan screenshot but I can definitely see what the designer was talking about with it being 'smart.' My question would be (and I'm a complete idiot with vector graphics) why do they have no problem putting directional shadows behind characters but not the scenery? It seems to me that the candle light in that particular screenshot is being blocked by walls and ridges. Is this difficult with scenery? I'm guessing the levels are dynamically generated like in the first and second (a great aspect of the game, might I add), is this what causes difficulty with shadow play? I think by and large with the fan shots they use borderline too much shadow. I am guessing shadow is crucial in setting the mood but dynamically generated shadow would be difficult... when would you have too much? For example in #1, the big white blob thing attacking blocks 1/4 the screen... four of those and you'd be blind. There could be an army behind him and you wouldn't know it. Something to think about.

Now, the rest of this stuff just seems to be color pallette and tint which seems to be artistic preference. I can't say which I like better but I've a feeling I'll appreciate color (and a change of that between levels) if I'm going to be staring at it for hours.

I'll be honest, when I first saw the game play I was very nonplussed, it was exactly Diablo II. But then I realized the great thing about II was that it was Diablo I with more features, levels, classes, monsters, etc. Ironically, I think that all that would make me happy in III is just more multiplayer options, more items, monsters, classes, etc. I can't want to play this one!

All they have to do, take all that green, all that distanced lighting shit, and make it black. Pitch as fuck black.

This was the thing in the first game, you couldn't just see infinitely further ahead, shit was dark in many places. That was half the fun of the 2nd and 3rd dungeons. I like a change, but honestly, this is to be some form of a dark game, this is not hello kitty meets diablo.

print out a radial gradient fill that's clear in the middle and black on the edges

paste it on your screen

Problem solved. Diablo zealots are happy, blizzard is happy. Emo kids can use this approach for a host of other games too. As for me, I won't do any of that sillyness. My monitor is rectangular for a reason.

The gist of the article is that that's because it's too expensive to do dynamic vis and dynamic lighting everywhere. Anyone that's ever played on some horrible Source map (DOD, CS, TF2) where someone's packed it full of dynamic lights knows what I'm talking about too.

I agree that it'd be awesome to see the lights wrap around objects and cast real shadows... but when you've got 20 zombies running around while you're running around and you've got to calculate the shadows based on the light emanating from bot

I think some of the things that people aren't taking into consideration are:

1) Diablo came out during the CRT games. The game was dark but not quite as dark as you remember, your monitor just sucked.

2) These are the LCD days. All that black is going to make all the 6bit panels that don't show true blacks well choke and show mud.

3) Diablo wasn't built around 8 player multiplayer. Diablo III is being built ground up as a multiplayer game that can also be played single player. You need to be able to see your companions. That's like the point of the game.

4) The physics of Diablo III look beautiful in motion. To do that, add in all sorts of dynamic, intelligent lighting, and have a game that will play terrific on an average system at standard 1280 x 1024 resolution ain't gonna happen. Not when you have 8 players casting spells and 50 enemies on the screen. This is Blizzard, they're not gonna put out a game if it won't run on an average system. That's kind of their thing.

My question would be (and I'm a complete idiot with vector graphics) why do they have no problem putting directional shadows behind characters but not the scenery? It seems to me that the candle light in that particular screenshot is being blocked by walls and ridges. Is this difficult with scenery? I'm guessing the levels are dynamically generated like in the first and second (a great aspect of the game, might I add), is this what causes difficulty with shadow play?

The reason is because creating dynamic shadows via shadow mapping or shadow volumes (which is what their technique looks like) is extremely expensive to calculate and then to draw (both techniques are often fill-rate limited, meaning the more that's in shadow, the longer it takes). Typically, designers have to define a subset of shadow-casting objects which are included in the calculation, and everything else is left out. Areas that are determined to be in shadow are then drawn dimmer than their surroundings. Scenery such as walls, mountains or hills doesn't usually cast these kinds of shadows because the effect can be reasonably approximated by simpler techniques (attenuation, directional lights, etc). Indeed, you'll often find that only certain lights cast shadows on certain objects, further simplifying the work.

I don't work at Blizzard, but I suspect the lack of universal shadowing has little to do with the random nature of the dungeons, and everything to do with high cost and limiting returns of truly "realistic" shadows.

Thus, the determination of what will cast shadows is typically done by the designers who have to determine what gets the most bang for the processor time.

That assumes a static light source, which is not the case here. For a moving light source, shadow volumes and/or shadow maps have to be regenerated each time the light moves (which is often each frame). Sure, your sun angle may not move and therefore you can pre-calculate all that, but those shadows aren't what impress--it's the dramatic shadowing cast by big spells, torches, or sparks flying off weapons that get the kiddies going.

I have always failed to understand what people's problem with Diablo III's graphics. The important thing is the gothic feel here. You don't need a color palette made up of shades of brown, grey, and black to achieve that... there's nothing wrong with having a colorful world, since it doesn't necessarily change the look & feel of the world at all. Hell, I by far prefer the screen shots Blizzard has produced to the "improved" stuff the fans have put out. The people doing that work may be happy with a world full of dreary colors which is hard to see any detail in, but I for one am not.

All the fans did was remove...well...all the SHARPNESS from the graphics. If I want to play a diablo game that looks like shit, I still have a trio 64 laying around somewhere that I will use. To play Diablo (original version).

You don't need a color palette made up of shades of brown, grey, and black to achieve that... there's nothing wrong with having a colorful world, since it doesn't necessarily change the look & feel of the world at all.

Exactly. Game developers over the last ten years have been tied to the idea that something can only be spooky if it's dark brown and gray, and is also a sewer. I was getting sick of it eight years ago, and games that have broken that mold have been very refreshing.

Quake was brown because id had to create a realistically lightmapped 3D environment with a VGA color palette. I greatly enjoyed the first Quake and still believe that technical limitations can result in good, interesting design choices, but the fact that a game designed to run on Pentium CPUs and 1 MB graphics cards has continued to profoundly influence game graphics and people's expectations thereof is... well... sad.
As for Diablo III, if people want to kick their feet and scream that it's too colorful, then Blizzard just needs to add a post-processing shader option to thump certain color ranges down a bit. See ATI's SmartShader or Far Cry's "graphics filters" for an example.

"You can do whatever you want with your world. It's your world. You can put a happy little bush here. Or some happy little clouds. Let's do that. *relaxing paintbrush tapping sounds* You see that? That'll be our little secret."

I think the problem is that people don't understand the story behind Diablo.

Diablo 1 events took very long, from King Leoric fall, the death of Prince Albrecht and the appearance of our hero. Also notice that the story says that several other heroes came to Tristam to find fame and fortune, but never came back from the dungeons. So, the place was completely defiled when you start the game.

Diablo 2 events, which should start some time after Diablo is defeated in the first game, find a kinda nice place, except for Kurast, which has been defiled by Mephisto. Also, you move from far away to Tristam, so the land is not defiled by the evils yet.

Diablo 3, as I could understand by the video, seems to take 20 years after the defeat of all Prime Evils and the game starts just after the fall of the meteor. So I would expect that there was no time to have the land and the dungeons defiled.

This has to do with Blizzard. Ever since Warcraft 3 they have shifted their graphic design to a more cartoonish or anime style.

I think the cartoonish style is more about a means to an end, rather than an end in and of itself. Blizzard prides itself on producing games that will run well on average hardware, and that means reduced scene complexity, especially in cases where you've got arbitrary amounts of geometry on the screen. Because of this, they're limited to broader artistic strokes to convey meaning.

I look at this a lot like stage theater - actors make exaggerated gestures and wear dramatic makeup on stage because they need to transcend the limitations of the medium. Blizzard uses simple polygons and textures because that's the best way to get a whole bunch of em on the screen at any given time. As long as it doesn't break immersion (and I understand for some people it does, but not for me), then I'm fine with it.

Personally, watching the gameplay video I wasn't thinking "these colors look off" or "this seems too cartoon-like". I was thinking more along the lines of "whoa, wall of zombies" and "that thing just bit that guy in half!"

True enough, but couldn't those same users adjust their own monitor/video settings to achieve the level of brightness they desire? I'd rather have the colors start out more vivid with the ability for the user to dial it back, than for things to start out too dark and end up looking washed out when brightness settings are raised.

Seriously; what's wrong with graphics that don't get in the way? Bloom-ridden gray-and-brown gets in the way of gameplay, and comparison shots like these show it better than just about anything else: it becomes too difficult to tell things apart. A little color makes games more fun.

I'm impressed with Blizzard's attention to detail. Some game designers (and designers in other fields) don't pay enough attention to things like visibility, subtly, utility, and balance in visuals. You might not like the style they chose, but you have to respect that they can justify the decision rather than just say "we like it that way".

It isn't cartoonish or anime - the idea is to create a fantasy world. Diablo didn't have a world - it had a town with a plain boring dungeon that was pretty much exactly the same all the way down. D2 made the first effort where you had some more variety in the character classes and that there were distinct areas each with a different feel but within each you still had dungeons that were essentially the same. From what I can tell with the screenshots for this world they are actually trying to create more of

It's really a matter of perspective. The difference between what the designers have made and what these fans want are slight. While Diablo III might not be as dark as they want it, it isn't as cartoonish as Super Mario Bros or Sonic the Hedgehog when it comes to color palette. Most people won't really care.

It has more to do with Blizzard realizing that having a game that has lower GPU requirements means a greater possibility of getting a sale.

Not everyone out there wants to get a new machine to play a particular game. Heck, when WoW came out, I was running a P4 1.8GHz machine with about 1GB RAM and a pretty darn old graphics card, and the game ran great everywhere but IF. And that was a huge thing, considering that same system could barely run EQ2.

I'm going to have to go ahead and say regardless of anyones personal preference we have to give a lot of credit to the designer for taking the time to comment on their choices.
Personally the only user created design change I like better is the last one...wow gayness.

Yeah, he has far more patience than I'd have. It takes a lot of nerve to take screenshots of an unfinished, unreleased game, hack them up in Photoshop, and then go "See, *this* is what you should have done." Let Blizzard design the game, and more importantly, let them finish and release it. If you play the finished product and it sucks, then you have a legitimate gripe. It's not like Blizzard doesn't have a track record of making great stuff.

People are always complaining about how colorful the current d3 images are. Did any of you ever play Diablo 2? Go join a hell difficulty game. Whenever you see champion/unique/superunique monsters, you almost always see an array of colors. Purples and Reds. Green auras. Even if you're running through the depths of a countess' tower, the screen is contrasted by dark colors and bright colors.

These bright colors make the game easier to play (oh that mob has one red enemy in it, that's the one I want to pop to get the better loot and more exp).

If some of the armchair game critics would go and reinstall d2, they would see that the new style is not all that different from the old!... And now I'm back to key runs. Need to get a hellfire torch! Later!

In Diablo I, the player was going down down down and it got darker as you went. This is part of the game, and as such it made sense to get darker.

In Diablo II, there are only a few zones that have a large number of levels, namely the zones leading to bosses. Much of the rest of the game is outdoors and pretty brightly lit. In the expansion, it's a snowscape which is about as bright as you can get. There's no sense of delving down so it didn't get darker. Even the hell portion of the game was itself a large flat landscape. I guess the three prime evils like to be able to see in front of themselves too.

Depending on what this game is about, it may not make sense for every indoor area to be pitch the fuck black. I agree that it's a more challenging game if you don't see infinitely in front of you, and maybe they'll address it. I hope there's some variety in the environments and how you have to navigate them, as it will make a better game. Fans requiring all the locations to be muted and gloomy are thinking short sighted.

Since WoW is a behemoth now, everything Blizzard ever does will be compared to it. This, to me at least, means they should focus on making things have a very distinct feel. Otherwise, the comparisons will be the killer.

"Yeah, Diablo III was okay, but it just wasn't WoW..." probably isn't something they want to hear.

A lot of the D3 fans don't want D3 to look like WOW.Designer says "Interesting (not), but thanks for the publicity" ; )

I must say i agree with most of the designers points.It still has to be easy on the eyes and gameplay, artistic perfectionis not the main point.And, as others have pointed out, if it's too "happy" for you, adjust the gamma, not the game.Comma coma, must rest...

Honestly my only issue with the blizzard designs are the tf2 style "Hay look we're reusing stuff from 1998" low-res textures and that the armor seems to be less realistic (at least in its physical proportions).

A Diablo III representative defended design choices against 'dark & desaturated' versus 'brighter & colored'. While admiting that a single screen shot could look cooler when 'dark & destaurated', they concluded, after much playtesting, that 'brighter & colored' 1) offered greater visual playability when many creatures and players are on the screen, and 2) made the game more intersting because different game areas actually looked different.

While I know the urge to show why these fans' visions simply do not work is strong, I have to ask, why bother? What's to be gained? They won't change their minds. Educating them to the reasons for decisions that are made won't change the fact that they want to bitch and moan about something - ANYTHING. Also, they want to show off. They want to play in Photoshop with the images and have their friends ooh and aah about how much better their versions look when the reality is that a vast, vast, vast majority of people feel that Blizzard makes simply stunning games. I won't even get into the fact that the fan-altered versions look like crap and are way too dark because that's beside the point - I just don't understand why he spent any time or effort responding to this sort of thing. Nothing will change for having done it other than giving the fans versions an extra 15 minutes of fame...

I think screenshot with the pseudo graffiti font that reads, "wow gayness" pretty much reflects the stupidity and immaturity motivating these guys. I guess in their minds everything needs to be "hardcore".

All I have to say is thank goodness the fans aren't designing the game. I much prefer Blizzard's more colorful, softer feel.

The last thing I need is every little gritty detail being so prominent preventing important details like enemies, items and my own character from standing out. I also don't want Diablo 3 turning into yet another drab, monotone game like most other games out there.

Those fan-altered images look like every screenshot developers release for PS3 games desperate to impress everyone with graphics when they often don't have much else to go on.

I'm surprised that with the popularity of WoW and the Wii that so many gamers apparently are still clamoring for more gritty, realistic, and in my opinion, boring and uninspired, art. No wonder most developers keep churning out crap.

One thing that is often overlooked or forgotten is that these still shots don't do the game justice, because a game running at 24+ fps will always look better than a still frame from said game (reason why in many cases, still shots from games are usually doctored to smooth out the jaggies) and anyone who watches the D3 Demo and think the game looks "kiddie" and "Wowish" and isn't in good spirit of the original Diablo games either hasn't played them recent enough or needs to have their eyes checked. The game looks amazing, and plenty sinister without looking like Isometric Doom 3.

In the article he makes clear that "impossible" is in reference to "reasonable hardware". Blizzard has always done a spectacular job making sure their fan base doesn't need to upgrade their machines to fully experience the game.

I think it's more likely that they realize that these fan generated graphics are ugly, would probably look even worse in motion than they do in photoshopped screenshots, and wouldn't play very well because they're so muddled. But they're dealing with some obviously hardcore fans, and they're probably thrilled that there are people out there who care enough to go through all this trouble, so they don't really want to come out and call those fans untalented hack artists.

So rather than call their fanbase stupid, they call themselves stupid. At the end of the day, they'll release the game they want to make, and judging from Blizzard's track record it will be a well made game that will sell very well. These people who are spending hours photoshopping screenshots will switch to spending hours playing the game, and everyone will be happy.

Oh, come on, now. The point is that, two days after launch, those same fans who mostly just altered contrast in the pictures, will release a mod that alters your monitor's contrast whenever you launch Diablo 3. It's not rocket science here people.

For the record, I'm not so much concerned about the contrast changes (see previous sentence), it's the cartoonish, WoW-like graphics that may kill this game's lasting appeal for me (see the Barbarian's armor in the 30min gameplay preview. It looks just like Warcraft 3.

I may be in minority here, but one of the best parts of Diablo 2 was the ridiculous, over-the-top violence and the cold, realistic graphics.

Disclaimer: I put 3000+ hours into Diablo 2, and I consider it the greatest game of all time. Diablo 3 will not live up to my expectations no matter what the Dev team does.

To be fair, graphics build atmosphere and 'feel'. His criticism felt like he found find the new atmosphere and feel disappointing compared to D2. I think that's a fair point. Really, its going to be the same with SC2. Some people are going to be turned off by the new 'feel' to it. Part of that will be gameplay changes, others will be the result of new graphics.

Graphics do more than 'look pretty'. They can effect gameplay, immersion, and feel. All this stuff about 'put gameplay/AI/story/characters before graphics' may be legit, but that doesn't mean that graphics are no longer a fair point of contention.

So, graphics are more important to you than gameplay? That's a rather shallow attitude.

Absolutely not! I play the "national sport of South Korea" several times a week, and love it.

What I'm trying to say is that the style of the graphics is what sells the game (to me). It's not about pixel shaders or polygon counts, it's about showing me a monster that just jumped out of Disney, vs. one that came from Alien. The fun is in what you're doing in the game, and if you're trying to be humanity's last hope in a world of chaos and demonic monsters, fighting off hordes of Pixar baddies tends to kill the suspension of disbelief. Simple as that.

You should RTFA. Most of the designers comments were that the fan-a;tered screenshots missed the point of why D2 was fun after so much time. The spell effects in D2, for example, were *very* coloful. Also, either the background or the monsters needs to have vibrant colors: if you used desaturaed colors for both, the monsters don't "pop" out of the background, and the game becomes fatiguing to play (even if it looks better in a screenshot). They changed to what they have now because they discovered this during playtesting.

This is why Blizzard makes good games - they actually make improvements based on playtest feedback.

Also worth remembering: the reason that WoW is more successful than every other MMO put together is precisely because Blizzard ignored the conventional wisdom, and catered to casual players over the loudly-voiced requests of the hardcore fans.

> Sorry, the reason WOW is more successful is because it uses warcraft propertyI disagree. You are close, but missed the mark. Warcraft 2 had _atmosphere_. They were able to leverage that. The toon graphics actually worked in Blizzard's favor. Everyone was sick of yet-another-pixel-shader game -- plus the importance of the ability to run on "low end" hardware can't be stressed enough.

> WoW is not god's gift to gaming. All it did was copied the best elements of prior MMO's and put them into one game (mostly), and gave it the warcraft themed graphics and universe.

MMOs and RPGs. From the 3 Talent Trees, the partial set items, the character classes, to loot-whores they basically learnt their lessons from Diablo 2.

But yeah, agree that wow is a shitty game -- but you must remember everything is relative: compared to everything else, it is WAY better. Blizzard is known for evolution, not revolution -- the constant polish of the UI makes this painfully obvious when playing others. Blizzard nailed the BASICS, and that is more important then the rest. UO focused more on breadth, but Wow focused on Depth. (When do we get our Castles, or the ability to craft furniture, damit!) Talents at level 10, new skills every 2 levels -- they slowly keeping feeding you that most people put up with the asinine grind.

> WoW is not god's gift to gaming. All it did was copied the best elements of prior MMO's and put them into one game (mostly), and gave it the warcraft themed graphics and universe.

Totally agreed. I've ranted before that Wow designers don't have a fucking clue about dead time. They SERIOUSLY need to go play some old school D&D and learn about it. Now if only the stupid mods would understand "dead time" is NOT FUN, maybe you wouldn't be downmodded.

> That's the real reason: i.e. doesn't require any kind of serious twitch skills.That's NOT a bad thing -- you gotta consider the demographic! It's not really feasible to do a MMO FPS. The RPG genre is different. The average wow age is 30+, not some punk kids. For those that DO want that twitch gameplay, CoD is quite nice, but a SLOWER paced game is what the masses want. The former doesn't require manual dexterity, the latter does. You literally are comparing apples and oranges about STYLES of GAMEPLAY. (OK, PVP throws a monkey wrench in this, but we're not talking about that.:-)

I think the real problem with MMOs is, just because you know what you _don't_ want in a game, doesn't imply that you know what you _do_ want in a game. Allmost everyone agrees the grind is ridiculous, but there are no "good" solutions. (D&D "solved" it by limiting the "level grind" to maximum 20.) People think more is better, but it is actually worse. With 10,000 life, 70 levels, you lose the "core" of what leveling up means. Its all about perspective, and the illusion of power.

First, usually when you program in some 3-D API you are building a world around some point in layers. This is typically done by your video card and then sent directly to output. There is only one saved world file that doesn't differentiate on which areas are supposed to be lighted near the character or not. In fact, it is really tricky to do fancy lighting. Probably the best theory on how to do it might be something like the 3-D textures that Carmack noted (where the lighting is a d

I think what you're talking about is making sure that objects occlude light originating from the other side.

This is usually done via radiosity calculations performed on the map in a process akin to compiling a program: all the shadows are painted onto the map before the game even ships. Those details never change through the course of the game, which is a huge win from an efficiency standpoint. This is typically referred to as static lighting.

For everything else, the game engine has to more or less fake a radiosity implementation in some way as to create convincing lighting, shadows occlusions, etc. This is what is under discussion here. Any such solution will never be as good as the static radiosity pass for the map, and will take a huge chunk out of your CPU/GPU/RAM budget in the process. Either you back a simple non-obtrusive hack (a blurry black circle under your avatar that is a 'shadow') or you go the full monty and impose stiff rendering restrictions somehow (cut the poly count for all models in half). Anything in the middle will be dismissed as slipshod craftsmanship (e.g. "shadows" in Quake 2).

So in short: 100% dymamic lighting is not feasible for a game like Diablo since there's too much happening at any given point. You're not going to see 100-monster brawls *and* fully accurate lighting and shading at the same time for years to come. The Diablo fanbois will have to wait until realtime ray-tracing hits the desktop.